Design Discourse - Composing and Revising Programs in Professional and Technical Writing, 2010a

Reinventing Audience through Distance
amount of institutional cover to solve these problems because of the promise of
online course delivery. As more experienced faculty well know, proposing untested
solutions to enduring problems like scarce resources can be a dangerous
business. A new faculty member might propose a bold solution; two new faculty
can get downright giddy when looking for possible solutions.
More than just an empire-building opportunity, this certificate program
has proved advantageous in helping the English Department bridge the gap
between different programs. In the process of formulating the new certificate
program, we serendipitously connected with another member of the faculty who
also specializes in digital issues, Dr. Kristine Blair. Through our discussions, we
quickly ascertained that there was much common ground and many similar
aspirations percolating in the English Department. Our literature program is
reorganizing around a textual studies paradigm and our Rhetoric and Writing
program has increasingly integrated online components like Electronic Dissertations
and eportfolios. All of these trends indicated a migration towards a
more digitally-oriented curriculum—a migration that a Scientific and Technical
Communication graduate certificate could propel. Working in concert with the
Rhetoric and Writing Program, and by including a proposal to help all English
faculty develop online courses, Drs. Edminster, Mara, and Blair all applied for
an Ohio Learning Network grant for a “Digital Studio.” Using a learning community
model, we carved a conceptual space to evaluate, and even migrate some
of our curriculum towards an online environment. The studio repurposed thenunused
offices and computer labs to host group workshops, one-to-one training
forums, and curriculum revision document drafting in order to help stimulate
discussions and eventually to help drive curriculum change. The Ohio Learning
Network “Digital Studio” grant allowed the three co-Primary Investigators to
hire a small staff and fence off time that would otherwise be taken up with teaching,
and granted a certain credibility in justifying our declaration of off-hour
facilities as studio space. In short, the grant allowed us the ethos to structure an
otherwise unauthorized environment. By re-mapping idle classrooms and offices
as studio spaces and calling meetings to fill those spaces with digital training
or future planning, two non-tenured faculty members were able to triangulate
several programmatic needs in the department and eventually create a new programmatic
iteration.
going digital/recreating context
While English departments have traditionally deployed a range of common
objects, referents and places to define what we do (the classroom, the novel,
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